Category: Featured at NOAA

Scientists lift a CTD rosette on board to collect ocean carbon samples. image credit: Nicolas Gruber, ETH, Switzerland

Global Ocean is Absorbing More Carbon from Fossil Fuel Emissions

The new research published by NOAA and international partners in Science finds as carbon dioxide emissions have increased in the atmosphere, the ocean has absorbed a greater volume of emissions. Though the volume of carbon dioxide going into the ocean is increasing, the percentage of emissions — about 31 percent — absorbed by it has remained relatively stable when compared to the first survey of carbon in the global ocean published in 2004.

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Ubaldo Lopez of the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez prepares to launch NOAA ocean gliders in the summer of 2017 off Puerto Rico.

Unmanned Ocean Gliders Help Improve Hurricane Forecasts

NOAA will soon launch a fleet of 15 unmanned gliders in the Caribbean Sea and tropical Atlantic Ocean this hurricane season to collect important oceanic data that could prove useful to forecasters. “If you want to improve prediction of how hurricanes gain strength or weaken as they travel over the ocean, it’s critical to take the ocean’s temperature and measure how salty it is,” said Gustavo Goni, an oceanographer at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory who is helping lead the glider research. “Not just at the surface, which we measure with satellites, but down into deeper layers of ocean waters.”

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